The doorbell rang, and Bea sighed, pulling her soaped up arms out of her sink. She wiped them off on the hand towel hanging off the stove and then walked across the loft to the door to answer it. As she tugged the door open, time seemed to slow down, but not for Beatrice, only for the people on the other side of it. This was a moment they'd been dreaming of, and now here it was. Bea smiled at them politely and looked between the two young women.
"Can I help you?" she asked, her voice high, feminine and somewhat nasally. "My name is Michelle," Michelle said, "and this is Keagan. We're your biggest fans." This was not the way Beatrice wanted to end her day. *** "Hello, please, do come in!" Leslie said, ushering Michelle and Keagan into her office before heading around to the back of her desk and seating herself again. She waited for the girls to sit down before speaking again, polite as she'd always been in her career. She had to be, this was public access after all, and she needed the community to like her, and thusly, like her network. After they'd sat down, she smiled and pushed a bowl on her desk towards them, asking, "Candy?" "No thank you, I'm diabetic," Keagan said, and Michelle looked at her. "You never told me that," she said. "It never came up," Keagan replied, shrugging. "No bother, just an offer," Leslie said, pulling the bowl back, "So...I guess I should state the obvious right away...you're looking for Beatrice, right?" "Yes," Michelle said, "I've been searching for her, or anything related to her for years. She has virtually no web presence." "Not surprising. She paid some people to wipe most of everything they could from the internet about her," Leslie said, surprising them; she leaned back and propped her feet up on the desk, feeling comfortable with these young women before continuing, adding, "You're not the first ones to come looking for her, obviously. A few stragglers have come in over the years, but once they hit so many dead ends, they knew to give it up. It isn't even that she would've been hard to find, it's more that she didn't want to be found, and actively worked towards erasing any trace of herself - and thusly the show - from every plane of existence." "Why did she-" Keagan started, but Leslie shook her head. "I really have no concrete reason. I know the business with the pizzeria didn't make her happy, and I know that she really disliked the man who ran the place when that deal was put into place. She blamed Liam for all of that, and the two drifted apart as he took over the more business aspect of the whole thing. She saw him as grifting her creativity, shilling out her pain for cash." "That had to hurt," Michelle said. "It hurt her tremendously," Leslie said, "and once the whole shebang fell apart, Bea did her best to erase the entirety of it. She pulled all the tapes so it couldn't be rerun, she bought out all remaining merchandise - including the stuff from the pizzeria - so it couldn't circulate and she packed everything away in a storage unit. She cut ties with everyone, except me, which she sends me holiday cards and came to my baby shower." "That's nice of her to stay in touch," Michelle said and Leslie nodded, smiling sweetly. "I think she saw how much I respected her love of the work itself, far more than her love of the money it brought her," Leslie said, "I admired her morals on the capitalistic bullshit that came with selling your art, especially when your art is so deeply entwined with your personal feelings and isn't just something you're trying to deliberately make money off of. She appreciated that." "She sounds so...very disciplined," Keagan said. "She is, which is why it isn't unusual for people to come in searching for her," Leslie said, "She inspired a lot of young artists with her beliefs once they found out about them, and that's why they want to seek her out. I just assumed that's why you two are here." "We're not artists," Keagan said, "I'm just interested in lost media." "Ah, and you?" Leslie asked, turning to Michelle. A hush fell over the room as Michelle debated opening up, and really explaining her complex emotions tied to Beatrice, a woman she's never met, and the beagle she represented. She took a few deep breaths, batted her eyes a few times, pulled her inhaler out and took a few puffs before exhaling again and began speaking, her nails tapping on the old oak arm of the chair. "I almost died as a little girl," Michelle said, "I was in and out of the hospital a lot, and my parents...they fought a lot, and I fell by the wayside. They just...they didn't have the time or energy to expend on me when they could barely deal with their own problems. Because of this, I spent most of my time awake in the hospital, attached to various breathing apparatuses, watching TV, and mostly Beatrice Beagle. She gave me hope, she was always so sunny and bright and...and she made me not feel alone. She made me feel like I was cared for, even if it was by a stranger in a dog costume." Nobody spoke, but Leslie opened her desk drawer and pulled out a small packet of kleenex, tearing it open and dabbing at her eyes. "When the show ended, I felt like I lost my only friend in the world. I was so alone. But...but she inspired me to not give up and to always have hope and to always keep going no matter how bad things got. I'm not looking for her for any other reason than to thank her for what she gave me. A will to live." "I'm going to write something down on this piece of paper," Leslie said, after wiping the tears from her face and composing herself once again, "you aren't going to say how you got it, and you aren't to ask me for anything else. I have never, in all my years of meeting people trying to find her, given anybody this information, but after what you've told me, I don't know how I can't help you." She finished writing, capped her pen, folded the paper neatly and slid it across the desk. Keagan picked it up and looked at without unfolding it, her lip quivering. "What...is it?" she asked. "It's Beatrices address," Leslie said, "and if you see her, if you actually speak to her, please be as candid with her as you were with me. It'll benefit you." "Why are you giving us this? Doesn't this invade her privacy?" Keagan asked and Leslie leaned back in her chair and smiled, pushing some hair from her eyes. "Because someone has to tell that woman how wonderful she is," Leslie said, "So maybe she'll finally start believing it." *** "...how...how did you find me?" Beatrice asked, still standing tucked halfway behind the opened door, as if she expected them to hurt her in some way for some reason. "Got lucky," Michelle said, not at all eager to sell Leslie up the creak, "can we come in?" "...I...I'm not interested in visitors. If you're seeking autographs or something of that nature, I don't-" "Miss Beagle, please, just let me speak to you," Michelle said as Bea started to shut the door, "You saved my life." The door stopped closing, and she opened it back up cautiously, peering at the two young, clearly trustworthy women, and then sighed, shook her head and opened the door. "Come in," she said, "But don't expect much." The inside of her apartment loft surprised them. Elegant, chic, and yet somehow stuck in the 40s. Soft jazz played from the old record players horn and the artwork on the walls were mostly paintings, though none they recognized whatsoever. She had bookshelves filled to the brim with books on any and everything you could imagine, and her lampshades were beautiful and looked hand crafted. As the girls took a seat on the couch, Bea looked at them, hands on her hips and chewed her lip. "I suppose I should offer you something to drink," she said. "You don't have to," Keagan said, "We're okay." "You have to excuse me, I...I rarely have visitors, especially ones I'm not expecting," Bea said, "In fact I spent a good few years ensuring that would never happen, and yet every once in a while someone still manages to find me. Seems, in this day and age, one can't disappear completely. Anonymity is dead, long live omnipresence." "Miss..." Michelle started, and Bea smiled as she seated herself across from them on an old stool. "Burden," she said, "My last name is Burden, but call me Beagle if you so wish." This made the girls giggle. "Miss Burden, you're...you're what kept me going. When I was a little girl, I was in the hospital, I suffer from severe bronchitis and COPD, or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. I spent a lot of time attached to breathing apparatuses of one kind or another, and today I still use inhalers and oxygen tanks regularly. But the one thing I did like having in the hospital was you. You were on the TV almost every day, reruns, and then your regular new shows when those aired. My parents didn't visit a lot, and I didn't really have any friends, so you were pretty much all I had, and you kept my spirits up and made me not as scared as I probably would've been." They watched for any sign in Beatrice's face of how she felt, but nothing came. She was stone faced. This made them feel somewhat uncomfortable, and Keagan and Michelle exchanged a brief nervous glance before Michelle started again. "When the show ended, I...I felt like I'd lost the only person to ever guide me and teach me anything. I've spent my life following your ideals, your beliefs, or I guess, those of Beatrice Beagles, I guess I should say, because-" "No, they're my ideals and beliefs. I am Beatrice. We are one. Please do not separate us," Bea said, surprising them as she crossed her legs, "Please, go on." "I...I mean there's not much else to tell. That was it. I have some old episodes still taped that I've digitized, but I didn't know you worked so hard to erase it all. If I'd known that, I would've done the same, if that's what you wanted," Michelle said, "I didn't know how badly you wanted to vanish." "I didn't want to vanish," Bea said, surprising them yet again, "The world wanted me to vanish, because I refused to play their game. Liam and his...his stunt with the pizzeria chain, that was a hump we never got over. As time wore on, I didn't feel as much like a person as I did a mascot. I knew, deep down, that to the network, I was there to get kids to ask their parents to take them to the pizzeria, not because I was imparting wisdom to young children who needed to be guided. They robbed me of my integrity by co-opting the most important personality I had and bastardizing it to be nothing more than another corporate excuse for creativity." "I'm so sorry that happened," Michelle said quietly, pulling her handkerchief from her coat pocket and putting it to her mouth, coughing violently into it. "So I figured if the world didn't want me the way I was, then I didn't want them to have any part of me," Bea said, continuing, looking her nails, her voice wavering a little, "they don't deserve people who care about their work if they don't respect the work itself. If they didn't want Beatrice Beagle for who she was, she didn't want them either. I try to refrain from using bad language, but really, what the fuck does a dog have to do with pizza anyway? Nobody was ever capable of explaining that to me." The girls laughed and nodded, which made Beatrice smirk as she continued. "I have to say, I'm not happy to have visitors, but it is refreshing for it to be for a good reason for once, because it means at least I made it through to one person for what I said, not what I sold," Bea said, "that almost makes it all worthwhile." Just then she heard the oven beep and excused herself to get up and head into the kitchenette. As they waited, Michelle using her inhaler again, Keagan looked to the side table by the couch they were seated on and noticed the picture of Bea as a young girl and her dog, sharing an ice cream cone. She picked it up tenderly, her mouth slightly agape. "Look at this," she whispered, pushing it into Michelle's lap, adding, "The dog. That's her. That's the beagle. She made the character after her dog. No wonder it was so personal to her." "Would you care for some food?" Beatrice asked, coming back in with an oven mitt on one hand, "I made some chicken, if you're interested." "Was this your dog?" Keagan asked, and Bea didn't respond, but she took the photo and looked at it for a few moments before exhaling and sitting back down. "That was Beatrice," she said, "Beatrice wasn't my real name. I adopted it as a moniker once she was gone. A testament to the long lasting love a friend such as a dog can give you. I molded and crafted the suit after her, with the help of a friend. It was in memory of her, to keep her spirit alive. That's all I wanted. I'd known her, nobody else had, but everyone deserved to have the same happiness she gave me. That's why I brought her to the world, only to have the world not appreciate her for anything other than her child friendly appearance and ability to market to the young audience." "I bet there's others out there who appreciated her the way we did," Keagan said. "Perhaps," Bea said, "But I don't do it anymore. The costume is put away for good. Beatrice is retired. Put down a second time. Do you have any idea what it's like to lose your best friend twice in a lifetime? It destroys a person." Michelle started crying, not even afraid of what Bea would think. "...thank you for proving to me that what I did had a purpose, made a difference," Bea said, "because by the end, it really felt like it hadn't." The girls stayed and had a bite to eat, discussed the legacy of the show a bit more and, when the time to leave came, Beatrice was seemingly enjoying their company and somewhat sad to see them off. As Keagan stood in the hall, pulling her jacket on and Michelle wheezed her way through her handkerchief, Beatrice excused herself momentarily. When she came back to the door, she had a tape in her hand. "I want you to have this," Bea said, "You need it more than me." She pushed the tape into Michelle's hands and smiled at them, before saying goodbye and shutting her door. Despite her kindness, and surprising openness, they couldn't help but notice she locked the door once it was shut. Likely force of habit more than anything else, but they couldn't ignore it either way. Keagan dropped Michelle off and then headed to work, leaving Michelle to watch the tape by herself. As she settled into her living room, she popped the tape into the VCR and sat back to see what she'd been given. After a bit of static, and then a title screen with production codes - clearly cut from broadcast but used for the networks cataloguing - passed by, the title screen for the show came on and the intro jingle started. She watched throughout the entire show, a rather mundane episode about not much in particular, but come the end of the episode, Beatrice did her usual farewell before saying she had some birthdays to read off from children who'd written in. As she read the names and gave sweet little birthday wishes to each and every one, Michelle finally realized why she'd given her this tape in particular. "And this letter comes from Michelle Helm, and it's her 9th birthday," Beatrice said, "She's written in to say that it would mean the world to her if I would visit her for her birthday, but seeing as I cannot do that, I figure the best I can do is say Happy Birthday, Michelle. You are a beautiful, intelligent young lady and I am happy you exist. I hope you have the best birthday you can have, and realize that every day you're here is a special day." This finally broke Michelle, and she started crying, but for the first time in a long time, they were tears of joy. Michelle stood up, clutching her Bea doll to her chest, and walked over to the basement door. She opened it, headed down the stairs and pulled the light string, brightening the room. She smiled at her work and knew she was on the right path. It was a good day. She'd have to remember to send Leslie Swann a gift basket.
1 Comment
Alienfysh
3/2/2021 02:06:56 am
Smiling again! Thanks Maggie
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Beatrice Beagle follows a young woman obsessed with a defunct pizzeria and kids show featuring a dog mascot. As she uncovers more about its mysterious past, she becomes sucked into the life of the woman who played the mascot, they both discover just how much they need eachother. Archives
April 2024
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